Formerly the non-partisan watchdog of the 2010 US Census, and currently an opinion blog that covers all things political, media, foreign policy, globalization, and culture…but sometimes returning to its census/demographics roots.

The U.S. Census Bureau began sending out 3,054 more questionnaires to addresses in Cincinnati this week, after the city won its appeal to get the Census Bureau to put back addresses it took off its list last year.

“That’s a huge victory,” said Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory, who claims the Census has historically undercounted Cincinnati and has made increasing the official count a top priority. “I’ve said for a while now that the effort to get the number right starts with that list of addresses that the census mails to.”

Cincinnati’s situation isn’t unusual. The city was one of about 2,600 local governments that filed address appeals with a special panel set up by the White House Office of Management and Budget – representing a total of 1.8 million addresses.

Of those, the panel determined that 91 percent should be added back to the Census Bureau’s master address file, said Philip N. Fulton, the director of the appeals staff.

The appeals board found that Cincinnati officials made a good case – using parcel maps and tax records – that the Census Bureau shouldn’t have removed the 3,054 of the more than 12,000 addresses it took out when it updated its list last year.

“Like in Cincinnati, we weren’t able to look at all 3,000 addresses individually,” Fulton said. “It’s a body-of-evidence sort of approach.”

So it’s hard to tell what effect the decision will have on Cincinnati’s count, Fulton said. It’s possible many of the addresses are vacant, or were already in the census file in a different format.

Many of the addresses that will get forms this week are near the neighborhoods of Over-the-Rhine, Clifton Heights, Corryville and North Fairmount. The Census Bureau had taken them out after conducting a street-by-street canvass of the city last year, saying either that it couldn’t find the address, that it wasn’t a residential unit or that it wasn’t within the city limits.